Reoccupy

My Scholarship entry - A 'place' I have visited

Germany | Thursday, January 10, 2013 | 5 photos

In 2010 at the age of 21, I fulfilled a life long dream to live and travel in Europe based in the city of Berlin, Germany. I moved to the country to study architecture. Not knowing a single person in the country I threw myself into a new world, new language and new culture. It was the hardest but most rewarding challenge ever.

I lived in the former East Berlin. I had always had a interest in photography and found a 1exa 1988 35 mm camera for 20 Euros at a flea market. Through trial and error I taught myself the film techniques and I spent the rest of my Berlin days with my camera trying to capture the place that given me so much freedom, enjoyment and opened the mind as I never expected.

On the day my visa ran out, on January 2011 around 2,500 police officers were deployed in Berlin to evict inhabitants of one of the capital city last former squats. The 25 residents of the Liebig 14 tenement block had refused to leave after losing a lengthy legal battle that has become a touchstone for the city's anti-gentrification movement.

I felt apart of their story and hope to explore and show the world via photography the amazing places we can find in our selves and in others.

Jesse